April 22, 2006

Board Meeting minutes

At Chief Solano KC Dog Show

 

The meeting was called to order at 10.22am.

 

ROLL CALL

 Present:  Lisa Sheeran, Donna Manha, Steve Baldwin, Rosemary Robles, Cynthia Cool, Susan Phillips, & Brenda Schuettenberg. 

Absent:  Heather Brandon

Club Member Attending:  Debbie Baldwin, Cathie Loomis, & Tony & Courtney Roberts.

Guest:  Connie Gehring

 

MINUTES OF LAST MEETING

 

Donna mentioned that the number listed after the Sweepstakes candidates names should be “nominations”, not “votes” in the General meeting minutes we received by e-mail.  This will need to be corrected at Sunday’s General meeting.

 

The minutes of the previous Board meeting of Feb. 18 were approved as printed in the Pug Pen.

 

REPORT OF PRESIDENT

 

Lisa welcomed everyone & stated her goal of trying to get more people to volunteer for club activities.

 

REPORT OF VICE PRESIDENT

 

none.

 

REPORT OF RECORDING SECRETARY

 

none.

 

REPORT OF CORRESPONDING SECRETARY

 

AKC has Okayed the judges applied for for Sweeps at the Richmond KC show, both days. 

 

She received correspondence from several companies that would like us to purchase Pug specific items from them for our fund raising efforts.

 

Received a newsletter from the Great Lakes Pug Club.

 

REPORT OF TREASURER

 

Balance Sheet, check detail, deposit detail & Expense Summary are attached (EX#1).  Susan requested authorization for reimbursement of postage costs incurred by her for shipping several First Aid Kits; Cynthia moved, Rosemary 2nd - Board authorized.

 

Authorization request for reimbursement of Specialty application fees, paid by Donna Manha $75; Cynthia moved, Rosemary 2nd - Board authorized. 

 

Susan asked that we set the Treasurer as the “Agent for Service of Process” for the club to be consistent with the Attorney General and State Notice filings, which record the Treasurer’s address as the official address of record.  This will ensure that it is kept up to date so that all notices served to the club will go to a valid address/active Board member.

 

REPORT OF COMMITTEES

 

Advertising/PR/Pug Talk Liaison:  (Peggy Bennington, chair) no report.

 

Annual Auction (Specialty):  (Peggy Bennington, chair)

 

Awards:  (Jim Williams, chair) he is getting the misspellings corrected on the award plaques.  2006 Membership Books have been mailed, already receiving updates.  Plan to continue sending monthly email updates as changes take place.  There will be 2 new membership requests to vote on during the General Meeting.

 

Bench Show Decoration:  (Needs a chair) no report.

 

B-OB Match:  (Joanne Clark, chair) date is 6/24 at the Hercules Club House.  Match in the morning, Jim Williams will offer handling workshop after the match.

 

By Laws Review:  (Helen Danna, chair) please send a copy of any proposed changes to her directly.  Susan clarified that these would include the changes already requested by AKC in its letter dated March 28, 2005.

 

Good Sportsmanship:  (Cynthia Cool, chair) no report.

 

Historian:  (Donna Manha, chair) no report.

 

Judges Education/Breeders Seminar:  (Donnelle Richards, chair) no report.

 

Legislative Liaison:  (Marie Clifford, chair) no report.  Several Board members commented on her doing a good job of notifying the club members of up coming legislation.

 

Litter Liaison:  (Keven Birdwell, chair) report via email, see attached (EX#2).  She looks forward to future puppy placements & invites those who have not used her services in the past to please consider doing so this year.  Requesting preferred call times be put on the website to help prevent meal interruptions, explain show weekend delays on call backs, & help eliminate late night calls.  Requests that all members who refer people please ask that party approaches after ring judging so they can have her full attention.

 

NCPC Picnic:    (Joanne Clark/Vicki Schnurpfeil, co-chairs) on track.

 

Pug Pen Editors:  (Cathie Loomis/Scott Ewart) last edition looked great!!  Cathy feels we should thank Scott for all the good work on his first issue.  Proposed a change in pricing for prime advertising pages, possible multiple page discounts, price break for camera ready vs. ‘need set-up help’ ads.  A copy of Peg Pen should be sent to whoever is handling PDCA Archival duties.

 

Public Education:  (Susan Phillips – only through the end of November) Goals for 2006      

1.    Find new Chair for post-Pugtacular Public Ed Committee work 

This needs to be in place so that the Cow Palace Public Ed table can be planned and staffed.  Planning and preparation should begin in December. 

2.    Specialty Table 

If a public education table is desired during the Specialty, it will be a non-staffed pamphlet and flyer-only table.  We could have membership materials, information from Pug Rescue organizations, flyers for Pugtacular, NCPC brochures and bookmarks and other AKC hand-outs we have left over from the Fashion Show.  No sales of First Aid Kits or DVDs planned. 

3.    Pugtacular Table 

Full public ED table planned for Pugtacular

·         TV monitor with fashion show DVDs, NCPC pictures and agility pictures showing

·         NCPC membership information

·         NCPC Brochure and bookmarks

·         AKC materials

·         (no Rescue information, since Rescue organizations will have booths at Pugtacular)

·         Sale of First Aid Kits 

4.    “Pug Q & A” 

Add a page to the NCPC website for pug-related questions and answers.  We can start with some of the basic information we carry in the brochure and add information that has previously been published in Pug Pen (pug care tips, things to know before buying your first pug, etc.) 

5.    Regular column (2x a year?) in Pug Pen with public education updates (need to figure out what these might be) 

6.    AKC Responsible Dog Owner Day 

It would be nice to participate in this (with other clubs or kennel clubs, possibly), but available time is limited, so this probably won’t be pursued (unless there is more interest in the club to do this)

 

Pug Health:  (Denise Panzich, chair) no report.

Pug Rescue Liaison:  (Tony Roberts, chair) During this year the goal of the rescue committee is to responsibly recommend funding to the regional pug     rescues and encourage NCPC members to participate in fund raising activities(Pugtacular and other events)and solicit help from members who have not participated previously.

               Tony also feels rescue groups who receive money from the club should be both fiscally & personally accountable to the membership.  He will ask them to step up & help at future events, to provide the club with an accounting of our donation dollars & where/how they are spent.  Tony will come up with a list of requirements the groups need to meet to be able to get donations from the club.

 

Pugtacular:  (Jim Williams & Dennis Lauterbach, co-chair) on track, currently scheduled for Saturday December 9th.  Details will be forthcoming as the year unfolds.

 

Specialty Show 2006:  (Lucia Torres- Simon) Judges selected were Del Richards, for Conformation and Jr. Showmanship, and Bob Birdwell, for Sweepstakes. 

The specialty will offer Rally for the 1st time this year, OB judge has agreed to cover that assignment for an additional $25 & we will need to purchase a Rally Kit – cost is +/- $202 – to be able to put this on.  Rosemary moved/Susan 2nd, Board authorized.

 

Statistician:  Top 10 Pugs  (Ernie Schnurpfeil, chair) no report.

 

Supported Entries:  (Donnelle Richards, chair) on track.

 

Sunshine:  (Rebecca Green, chair; Doug Green, Peggy Bennington, & Annette Friskopp) The Board voted that flowers & a card would be sent in the event of serious illness, accident or death of members; Cards will be sent in the event of serious illness, accident or death of members immediate family member or Pug.  Members will be given a free memorial ad page in Pug Pen for their Pug.  Donna moved/Rosemary 2nd, Board adopted these guidelines. 

           Cynthia moved we open the Sunshine Fund with a one-time donation of $150 from the club treasury/2nd by Steve, Board approved.

Future funding to come from passing-the-hat at tomorrows General Meeting, a check-box donation on membership renewal forms, & activities to be decided on in the future.

This budget will be added to donations already received and the new budget line will include this as well as expenditures already incurred.

 

Ways & Means:  (Cynthia Cool, chair) Cynthia mentioned she was hoping to get a better response this year on our fund-raising efforts. I found last year to be a bit disappointing, in that many members did not see the importance of our efforts to provide funds into our treasury by their attendance and help in the different fundraisers the club provided for them. Although we will not be doing a fashion show this year, there will be other fund raisers to support that should offer plenty of diversity to attract our members.

              We began the year with our 2nd Chili Cook-off, raising $85 for the club and attended by 20 people.... better than last year's attendance and making more money.

                  Our next fundraiser will be this summer. I plan to have another International Potluck with, instead of a costume contest like we had at our last one, this time dancing! Steve volunteered to be DJ contingent upon the club paying for these services, the costs to be offset by a donation in the same amount to the club from Steve allowing him to show business activity in his DJ business.  Susan clarified that donations to NCPC are not tax-deductible, since we are a 501(c)4 rather than a 501(c)3 organization. We will have it on a Saturday night at the Alamo Women's Center, date to be decided. I would like to plan a big red tag/garage sale at one of the flea markets this summer. I will be asking one of our members to step up and help find the best location and will be asking for members to donate items to sell. I've heard from other clubs that this is a very successful way to raise money with minimal effort. We will also need volunteers to staff our booth during various hours so no one or two people end up doing all the work.

             Several people who came to our potluck and costume party said they would like to do another one. Everyone who has purchased an outfit for their pug to wear wants a place for him or her to wear it. We may try to do something around Halloween, after our Specialty, and tie it in with a lunch/brunch on a Sunday for those who have to work Saturdays.

 

Website:  (Joanne Clark, webmaster) I sent Lisa a separate email about posting Minutes and our balance sheets, etc. to our website It loses a little bit of formatting, but I think it is still very easy to read.  Also, html pages use about half the room of a Word file!  I did not post any of the balance sheets, but I did talk with Susan about them.  She will continue to send them to me in PDF format, which will be easy to post and will also keep the nice formatting. 

         Lisa did mention to me about password protecting the page or a "members only" area, but I am not crazy about that idea.  First, it's more work since every time you change the main page (i.e., add new minutes or other items) you need to rescramble it, which means keeping an unscrambled and scrambled copy of the page.  Second, because I know that half the people in the club would lose the password.  And third, I don't think we are posting anything that is private and confidential (like the Members' names and addresses) so who cares if anyone else reads it?  

I think we will be okay with our current hosting plan for the balance of this year; we are currently using 65% of our allowed space.  It was just renewed for about $107 for a year.  We will definitely need to go to the larger plan next year -- especially if we continue hosting the POTM web pages.  In the meantime, if we do happen to go over our allowed space, they will automatically give us another 100 MB of space for $10 a month.  I think the next plan up is going to cost us around $200/year, so it's up to the board when they want to take that plunge.  There are also more old photos that I can delete if we need the space (like photos from the 2003 Specialty and B Match), but that's an item for the board to discuss.  Is there a reason we want to keep photos from 3 years ago posted on the website?  I could certainly put them on a CD and give them to Donna to keep with the rest of the Historian items.  The board should probably also be reminded that the Pugtacular domain name has been transferred to NCPC, for an overall cost savings to the club, so those files also took up some of our available space.   

I also wanted to tell you my plans for the POTM for the next few months.  Virginia was very late in getting her information to me, so her page did not go up until the middle of the month.  I had intended to put Donna's page up on the first of the next month, since Virginia's page was late going up because of Virginia, but then Donna was late in getting her information to me too.  And I felt that part of the reason she was late was because of more club responsibilities.  So I decided to move everyone to the 15th of the month until we draw a new set of names.  The last 12 days of the final month I will give everyone a one-day front page again, and then we can start back up on the 1st of the month.  It seemed like a reasonable solution to me, plus gives everyone one more day of being on the NCPC front page, which I hope they will all like.  We can do the next drawing at our picnic in August or our Puppy Match...either way is fine with me.  I just need to know which one so I can send out an email early to give everyone a chance to sign up for the next 12 months.  My plan is to include everyone who has not had a chance to participate first, then if we don't have 12 people, we can choose from members who have already participated.

       

UNFINISHED BUSINESS

 

Donna reminded us that storage is full & needs to be purged…sell on eBay/tag sale/donation??  General consensus was the decorations from previous Cow Palace shows would bring a better price if sold as party theme as opposed to as individual pieces.  A volunteer is being sought to help get clear pictures of the items & to get them to Lisa to sell on Craig’s List.

 

Judges Selection:  Cynthia brought up future judges/voting needed – might have to do a double vote to cover 2 years of NCPC Specialties in the near future to get back on track with timely selection so we aren’t limiting ourselves to judges who haven’t judged pugs in the previous 6 months on the West Coast.  If we ask them early they need to not accept assignments that conflict with the judging agreement they sign with us.

 

NEW BUSINESS

 

Membership:  Discussion related to the need for a Standing Rule regarding fee to change from Associate Member to Regular Member during the current year.  Board approved a motion (Donna moved/Rosemary 2nd) to ask the membership to continue the $5 charge if change is requested within the first 9 months of the club year, full membership price if request is submitted during the last 3 months of the club year.   If applicant’s Regular Membership is voted approved, the fees will be applied to the upcoming years dues.

 

Susan moved the meeting be adjourned/Brenda 2nd, there being no other business to put before the Board, meeting adjourned at 12 noon.

 

 

Respectfully,

Brenda Schuettenberg

NCPC Recording Secretary

05/02/06